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The Postland Theory mafia about to send it after winning best am movie at The Reels.

As you might have heard by now, at The Reels film festival an esteemed panel of judges – Peter Line, Eddie Wall, Ingemar Backman, Nico Droz and David Benedek no less – awarded Postland’s Periscoping with a Golden Reel for the best amateur film of the year. With their premiere tour underway, the movie itself about to drop and Kas Lemmens’ B-roll edit already blowing minds, we sat down with the man himself, Tim Schiphorst, and asked him a few questions…

First things first. Can you tell us more about the very beginning of Postland Theory? How did the crew get together and what have you produced and achieved so far?

We were pretty much all shredding indoor together. I was often making some indoor videos for the fun of it, but Cees Wille and Gerben Verweij were already going to Helsinki to film for this other video production. Sadly enough nobody ever got to see these videos so I decided I wanted to bring this indoor crew together and create a format to push Dutch riders. Back then most people didn’t even know snowboarding existed in Holland, even though a lot of guys here were killing it.

For our first film Momentum [hit the link to watch] we got all these experienced urban riders Like Gerben and Cees together with some new up and coming kids like Kas Lemmens and Bob Van Unnik. We spent our time in Helsinki and most video parts were shot in little over a week. It was kind of stressful because we had only a few days to film a full part and the weekly teasers I wanted to drop.

It was obvious these unexperienced guys had no trouble adapting to the streets. For our second film Catscratch [yep, hit the link again to peep] the crew mainly stayed the same; Kevin De Haan, another dome rat, joined in, and some other riders focussed on different things that season but the main group pretty much always stayed the same.

You just released your third movie named Periscoping. Why ‘Periscoping’, what should we expect and are there any major changes?

A periscope is that thing they use in submarines to see what’s going on above the water. You might know that Holland is a country that’s mainly located below sea level – my house is almost 11 meters under the sea level. Periscoping means that we wanted to explore what’s going on above the sea level: explore new countries and be a less ‘Dutch’ production in general.

We went to new countries, new locations like Poland and Lithuania. Added Will Smith (UK) to the riders list, but more importantly tried to get the overall level of the film to a more international standard.

There are not many places for snowboarding besides snowdomes in Netherlands so where did you film the movie?

That’s actually kind of ironic! Two weeks after I decided on the title of the movie it started dumping in Holland. Literally the most snow we’ve seen here in the past 30 years or so. Usually when it snows in Holland it’s not even enough to enjoy for a day, and that day the whole country is usually stuck in traffic jams so you can’t even get around to hit spots.

This year was different though. While we set out to explore other countries ‘above the sea level’ we actually shot a great deal of the movie just around the corner. It was awesome finally being able to hit the spots we’ve been fantasising about for years but never had the snow to hit them.

How did you finance the movie? Was it hard for you to get enough sponsors?

It’s really hard to get the funding together, but it has been like that since the beginning. Snowboarding in Holland is really tiny and the industry is run by small distribution centres who can’t offer much more than a snowboard. Luckily we also have some really amazing companies based here that see the value in a movie and are super down to not let movies become a thing of the past – Monster Energy, Bataleon, BigAirBag, GoPro, GVconstructions, Holden and Sabre made it happen. Budgets have always been really tight though so I guess we all learned how to work with what we have.

There is one girl in the movie, Rachida Aoulad. How did it work out having a girl in a crew full of guys?

Rachida is super easy to have on a trip; it’s not like she spends her mornings getting her make-up straight or something. Besides that she’s very helpful at spots, even when she doesn’t necessarily want to ride it she still digs out stairs like a champ. You could say she’s less girly than some of the guys.

As we all know nothing usually goes as planned. Did you have any setbacks or other kinds of trouble during the filming?

Oh hell yes, every single day something goes wrong: getting kicked out, generators that don’t work, winches that don’t work, and so on. For all the technical problems we luckily have Gerben, aka GVconstructions, on board to fix anything that breaks down.

We did crash about 7 cars though, I think.. that sucked but what can I say, the whole crew is a bunch of kids around 19 years old that just got their drivers license. Luckily no major damage but just a scratch or dent here and there.

The sketchiest experience of the year was being arrested in Lithuania and literally spending a night in jail for snowboarding. We got arrested because the police had never seen snowboarders before and didn’t know what we were doing, the arresting officer was nice, though, but at the police station he handed us over to another cop that didn’t speak any English and had no idea what we’d done, so he dealt with us like any other criminal. We got thrown in this sketchy jail-type section like you see in the movies: metal rusty bars, concrete walls with holes in them, and a ditch in the floor to shit in.

First it was kinda funny but after a few hours it got really sketchy because we had no idea what was gonna happen.

You just won the Best am movie at The Reels. How stoked are you guys? Is this gonna make it easier for you to make a new project?

It was the best thing that could ever happen, I’m still completely speechless about it, but receiving the trophy was just half of the whole experience.

Imagine that this is the third movie we made, but in 3 years of filming we never really had any REAL feedback besides: ‘that was sick man’. Hearing all the props from legends like David Benedek and Eddie Wall has been truly overwhelming and getting a shoutout from the Nike guys while [they were] presenting their own movie was just… I don’t know how to describe it, haha! It definitely motivates us all to continue filming.

Where can we watch the movie? How did the premieres go so far?

Two weeks ago we had our World Premiere in Den Haag at the Rock A Rail pre-party and it was absolutely mental. During the movie everybody was constantly cheering, laughing… pretty wild.

I really recommend you come watch Periscoping (and any other movie for that matter) at one of our premieres. For me it’s the best experience to watch it on a big screen with all your friends around you. Hearing everybody’s reactions, laughing together… It’s also one of the reasons why The Reels was such a dope event.

Our next premieres are: This Friday! 11th October in Stockholm together with Random Bastards, 18th October in Munich, 26th October in Innsbruck, 31st October in Zürich and there are some screenings in Poland and Helsinki but, honestly, I don’t have much info on that yet. You can get the latest news and event info at our FB page – Facebook.com/postland.

After our whole premiere tour the movie will be released online for free so you can watch it here on Onboardmag.com, or download it, invite your friends, pop some beers and watch it on the sofa.

Last words? Message to the world?

Thanks everybody for the amazing responses we’ve had so far and making our premieres so awesome. Hit us up on the slopes so we can do some laps.

Also look for us on Facebook (Facebook.com/postland) and Instagram (@postlandtheory) to stay on top of things: shitload of leaks and other random stuff on there.

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